


Fracturing your dreams

by Baryshnikov



Series: Where Monsters lie [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Dreams vs. Reality, Insanity, M/M, POV Second Person, Sensual horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-23
Updated: 2018-10-23
Packaged: 2019-08-06 04:54:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16381811
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Baryshnikov/pseuds/Baryshnikov
Summary: You close your eyes and repeat your refrain.He is not real.





	Fracturing your dreams

**Author's Note:**

> From Harry's perspective
> 
> I should probably credit 'Karliene - Become the Beast' (on YouTube) for inspiring this fic

When you first see him, his face holds a smile, but his eyes are rotten. He has a handsome face that is ripped at the edges and where the skin is peeling back, you can see that there is no substance behind the glamour. Whoever or whatever is inside his skin, has been dead for a long time; it is slowly decaying behind the gorgeous mask that he wears, leaving nothing but a pervading smell of rot, so thick you can taste it in the air around you. Though as much as you mention it, the others never notice, they never comment, they never remark on the taste of death on their tongues. So, you suppose it isn’t there, that you are imagining it all, letting a faceless nothing deceive you. Letting your deepest imagination run wild into unchartered territory. You are tired, you are stressed, you think of other things and you do not see his face again. That does not mean he leaves your thoughts though. He is all you can think about. He has discovered something inside you that even you didn’t know was there, and now he wants to let it out, let it run free. You do not know what this feeling is, but you do not want it, so you close your eyes and say words to convince yourself.

_He is not real._

He haunts your every dream, sometimes he blurs out of them, an intangible substance spilling into reality. Those are the days you feel sick like something is clawing in your stomach. Seeing Tom’s wicked smile, a bubblegum gash across his face, so pale and innocent, so deceptive and cruel, is disturbing. It puts you on edge. Especially when no one else sees him standing as clear as day, and dripping with muddy water, as if he had endured a baptism in a mire, and now he is soaked with all the transgressions of man. Everyone tells you there is nothing there, even when you describe him so vividly. He is the brightest apparition you have ever seen, always gleaming and always smiling. You know he is hungry. You can see it in the way he runs that red tongue across his teeth and you can see it in his eyes. There is something so sinister scuttling under his skin, something ominous about his smile, something so cold and empty hanging in his eyes, but his words are filled with a heat, a passion, an intensity. Every word is sugar coated and sickly sweet, obviously a lie but a hypnotic consuming lie, silken and saccharine like a spider’s web. The type of lie you’re willing to overlook and you are so very willing to overlook it, just to hear that honied voice whispering promises to you like a messiah. Tom is very persuasive, but you close your eyes and repeat your refrain. 

_He is not real._

The distinct depiction of Tom is often blurred by the darkness. Whenever you look in the mirror you see Tom’s pretty face seeping through cracks you didn’t know existed. When you have not slept your eyes look so much darker, black almost: stagnant pools filled with a myriad of dependent souls whose hands are dragging you into their depths. Your eyes are just like Tom’s eyes, and you could stand for hours staring into them. Despite your heart hammering at what you might find in their nadirs, you are unable to turn away, unable to free yourself from that delectable spell, the one you fear you might choke under. Despite the fact your hands are cold and are moulded to the curve of the sink, and your legs are trembling, and you feel so sick; you are so alive. There is a delight to torturing yourself. Forcing yourself to see him, to watch him move, already inside you, just waiting for his moment to devour you. Yet as much as you want to, you can’t deny there is a magnetism to Tom that you’ve never experienced with anyone else before. You feel something between you, something horrible: a temptation, an attraction, an invitation. Alone in the dark, you are almost willing to extend your hand and touch the fingers of a monster. You are almost willing to be dragged into the darkness and drowned by his exquisite perfection. Standing here, you can almost feel your lungs filling with the blood and the water and the writhing insects that you can see Tom so much appreciates. Almost. There is but one single string of rationality that keeps you in reality, keeps you grounded to the bathroom floor, shaking against the sink. Your knuckles as white as the porcelain, dreaming of his sickening hands wrapped around your throat. Desperately you close your eyes and repeat your refrain.

_He is not real._

At night it is so much worse, at night Tom is in every corner, every hollow, every alcove. He is waiting, so at night you lie awake, eyes burning, staring at the ceiling, reality cracking and shadows bleeding from the walls, shadows that make a form in the dark. A white spectre that you know too well. An angel whose heart is a mangled mess and contaminates everything he touches with a perpetual blight. You know he is here without having to look up. You can hear him breathing: inhaling and exhaling, inhaling, exhaling, inhaling and exhaling, willing you to fall asleep, to come back to his realm. You do not want to go so you stare for too long at the wall. You watch the shadows that make Tom morph into something that can no longer be human, something monstrous and disturbing, something that makes you sick to your stomach. His ophidian eyes still glossy, forked tongue still red, wicked smile always there. He looks so hungry, starving for you, and when you look at him you can feel your own hunger start to spread itself through your blood. No matter what you try to convince yourself, you know you are scared, scared of what that pretty monster could do to you if he wanted. Scared of what you would let him do. But you know it is only your dreams, so you close your eyes and repeat your refrain.

_He is not real._

It feels as though you’re being swallowed, digested, your world is no more than a smear of colours, hazy shapes all making the same face. You want it to stop, that’s what you tell yourself, that you want to be free from the monster that runs through your veins. But when the others are asleep, and you are alone in the dark, you know you never want this to end. You know that soon you’ll lose yourself to him because Tom is too palpable, too powerful, too persuasive to be denied. You try to reject the inevitable, insist that you would not sleep, would not let Tom have what he wants. However, the world becomes so blurred, that days melt together and everywhere you see Tom’s face superimposed on the others. Your every nerve is ragged, scratched down to the bone until you cannot bear to resist it anymore. You do not close your eyes that night. Immediately you can feel cold hands that aren’t there touching your skin, and a voice that comes from no living mouth inside your head. Tom is everywhere, a sickness you can’t escape from, no matter how hard you try. It should terrify you. It doesn’t. Not anymore. You live for his spectral hands palpable against your skin and for the pink scratches you find on your legs. You are sure you did it yourself, although you do not remember doing so. You do not show them to anyone, just as you do not show them the fingerprints forever ingrained in your skin. Though even to yourself there is no explanation for the teeth marks at your neck. When you touch them you feel weak, that thing in the pit of your stomach stirring, twisting and writhing and making you ache. You trace those marks with your fingers as you lie touching yourself in the dark. You feel him with you, an ethereal presence, breath cold on your neck, coaxing your fingers until you’re crying out. In the morning, you tell no one. What is there to tell them? They will not believe you. But as you stand there in front of the mirror, staring, unblinking, at the handprints all over you, his handprints, you do not say your refrain. You know. 

_He is real._

**Author's Note:**

> I do hope this is ok, I'm still new to this pairing, so I'm still figuring a few things out, anyway, hopefully you enjoyed it.


End file.
